CHL 610 Week 5 Community Health Profile Example

The East Side in Twelve Pages: Building a Bilingual Community Health Profile That Starts With Strengths and Explains the Causes Behind the Numbers

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

CHL/610: Community Health Assessment

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The neighborhoods, survey results, profile layout and community review are composites written for a model paper modeled on Yakima, Washington; city estimates come from CDC PLACES, and research findings come from the sources cited.

After months of data collection, the steering committee faced a new problem: how to present it. The hospital's past assessments ran to 90 pages that few residents read. A committee member who had knocked on doors for the survey asked for something her neighbors would pick up at the church and read over coffee. This paper describes the community health profile the committee built.

Design Choices

The committee set four rules: twelve pages, English and Spanish side by side, graphics instead of tables wherever possible and strengths before problems. A technical appendix would hold detailed tables for professionals.

The Organizing Framework

The profile is built around the social determinants of health: the everyday circumstances of life, from childhood through work and old age, and the policies that set those circumstances. Braveman and Gottlieb argue that features such as walkable streets and nearby grocers matter, but that money, wealth and schooling sit further upstream and drive much of the pattern in illness, and they trace pathways, including biological ones, from disadvantage to disease (Braveman & Gottlieb, 2014).

Choosing What to Include

The assessment produced more than 150 measures. The committee chose about 35 for the profile using three tests: does it show a large gap with a benchmark, does it matter to residents and could it point to action? Measures that failed all three went to the appendix. The choice kept the profile focused on what residents and partners could use.

Page One: Who We Are

About 32,000 people live on the east side. Most are Hispanic, and many families go back three generations on the same blocks. Households are larger and younger than the city average. A photograph from the youth photovoice project, children playing soccer by the river at dusk, opens the page.

Page Two: Our Strengths

Seven congregations, a 400-child soccer league, a mutual aid network, strong families and residents with skills to share. Forty-six percent of surveyed residents named a skill they could teach others.

Page Three: Income and Work

Many adults work in agriculture and food processing, often seasonally and without benefits. Farmworkers spoke of heat, pesticide drift and the risk that reporting an injury could cost them their place on a crew. Research on farmworker health describes dangerous, low-paid work and obstacles to care that range from language and legal status to cost and distance (Arcury & Quandt, 2007).

Page Four: Housing and Food

Rent or mortgage took over half of income in two of every five surveyed homes, and more than a quarter of households had faced an empty pantry before payday during the year. The east side has no full-service grocery store.

Page Five: Our Surroundings

Busy arterials, a broken playground, an unlit river path and buses that come once an hour shape daily life. Youth photographs show both problems and pride: a mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe beside a trash-filled lot, a grandmother's garden beside a cracked sidewalk.

Page Six: How We Live

City estimates for 2023 put physical inactivity outside work at 28.1% of adults and smoking at 13.1%, compared with 12.2% and 6.5% in Seattle (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2025). Residents linked inactivity to long work hours and few safe places.

Page Seven: Getting Care

Nearly a third of surveyed adults lacked a regular doctor or clinic, and close to two in five had put off care they could not afford. City estimates show 19.7% of working-age adults lack insurance and 56.1% visited a dentist in the past year.

Page Eight: Chronic Disease

Citywide, CDC puts diagnosed diabetes at 12.9% of adults, high blood pressure at 33.2% and obesity at 39.7%, each well above Seattle, and 26.8% of adults rate their health as fair or poor (CDC, 2025). One in four adults describes their health as only fair or poor.

Page Nine: Mental Health

Frequent mental distress affects 18.1% of city adults. Focus groups described anxiety about immigration enforcement, grief after pandemic losses and few counselors who speak Spanish.

Page Ten: Children and Youth

School data show higher chronic absence in east side elementary schools, with asthma and dental pain common reasons. Teachers reported that some older children miss school during harvest to care for younger siblings or to work. Youth described wanting safe places to gather.

Page Eleven: What It Means

The profile connects the pages: low wages and seasonal work limit insurance and income; income shapes housing and food; long hours and unsafe spaces limit activity; and together these conditions drive diabetes, obesity and poor health. The causes sit mostly outside the clinic.

Page Twelve: Key Messages

Five key messages close the profile: our community has deep strengths; chronic disease is far more common here than in Washington's larger cities; the causes lie in work, income, housing, food and places; residents cannot get the care they need close to home; and residents are ready to act with partners.

Graphics That Work

The designer tested graphics with residents. Bar charts comparing the city with Seattle were easily understood; maps of census tracts were not, until labels named familiar landmarks. Icons showing one in four adults made percentages concrete. Each graphic carries a one-sentence takeaway in both languages, so readers who skip the chart still get the point.

Community Review

Before release, the draft was reviewed at two community meetings and by the steering committee. Residents asked that the strengths page come first, that a photograph of farmworkers be replaced with one they chose and that Spanish text use local expressions. A pastor suggested adding a page on where to get help now, which became the inside back cover.

Data Limits in the Profile

The profile tells readers where numbers come from and how certain they are. City estimates are modeled, survey results come from 612 households and focus group themes reflect those who took part. A short box on each page, in plain language, explains the source. Honesty about limits builds trust, especially among residents who have seen reports that misrepresented their community.

Using the Profile

The profile is meant to be used. The coalition will use it in grant applications, the hospital in its implementation strategy and the health district in its improvement plan. Residents on the committee plan to bring it to city council when budgets for parks and transit are discussed. A one-page summary will accompany each use.

Distribution

The profile will be distributed at churches, schools, the community center, the clinic and the flea market and posted online. The technical appendix, with full tables and methods, will go to partners and funders.

Conclusion

The east side profile brings together secondary data, residents' voices, photographs and assets in twelve bilingual pages that start with strengths and explain causes. The social determinants framework connects work, income, housing, food and places to chronic disease, and city estimates show the size of the gap with Washington's larger cities. Community review made the profile residents' own.

References

Arcury, T. A., & Quandt, S. A. (2007). Delivery of health services to migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Annual Review of Public Health, 28, 345-363. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.27.021405.102106

Braveman, P., & Gottlieb, L. (2014). The social determinants of health: It's time to consider the causes of the causes. Public Health Reports, 129(Suppl. 2), 19-31. https://doi.org/10.1177/00333549141291S206

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). PLACES: Place data (GIS friendly format), 2025 release [Data set]. data.cdc.gov. https://data.cdc.gov/d/vgc8-iyc4